ldom passed much talk between them: Linton learnt his lessons and
spent his evenings in a small apartment they called the parlour: or else
lay in bed all day: for he was constantly getting coughs, and colds, and
aches, and pains of some sort.

'And I never know such a fainthearted creature,' added the woman; 'nor
one so careful of hisseln. He _will_ go on, if I leave the window open a
bit late in the evening. Oh! it's killing, a breath of night air! And he
must have a fire in the middle of summer; and Joseph's bacca-pipe is
poison; and he must always have sweets and dainties, and always milk,
milk for ever--heeding naught how the rest of us are pinched in winter;
and there he'll sit, wrapped in his furred cloak in his chair by the
fire, with some toast and water or other slop on the hob to sip at; and
if Hareton, for pity, comes to amuse him--Hareton is not bad-natured,
though he's rough--they're sure to part, one swearing and the other
crying. I believe the master would relish Earnshaw's thrashing him to a
mummy, if he were not his son; and I'm certain he would be fit to turn
him out of doors, if he knew half the nursing he gives hisseln. But then
he won't go into danger of temptation: he never enters the parlour, and
should Linton show those ways in the house where he is, he sends him
up-stairs directly.'

I divined, from this account, that utter lack of sympathy had rendered
young Heathcliff selfish and disagreeable, if he were not so originally;
and my interest in him, consequently, decayed: though still I was moved
with a sense of grief at his lot, and a wish that he had been left with
us. Mr. Edgar encouraged me to gain information: he thought a great deal
about him, I fancy, and would have run some risk to see him; and he told
me once to ask the housekeeper whether he ever came into the village? She
said he had only been twice, on horseback, accompanying his father; and
both times he pretended to be quite knocked up for three or four days
afterwards. That housekeeper left, if I recollect rightly, two years
after he came; and another, whom I did not know, was her successor; she
lives there still.

Time wore on at the Grange in its former pleasant way till Miss Cathy
reached sixteen. On the anniversary of her birth we never manifested any
signs of rejoicing, because it was also the anniversary of my late
mistress's death. Her father invariably spent that day alone in the
library; and walked, at dusk, as far